“Here is blood!” cried Henry.  “I was sure I hit something that time!”

His tone was triumphant.

“I tell you what it is, Monsieur,” said the calm voice of the Count:  “if you go through the world banging off shots on the chance of shooting white owls which you do not see, you are indeed likely to hit something.  But whether you will like it after it is hit, is another matter.”

Then I went indoors, for my arm was paining me.  In my own room I eagerly examined the wound.  It was but slight.  A pellet or two had grazed my arm and ploughed their way along the thickness of the skin, but none had entered deeply.  So I wrapped my arm in a little lint and some old linen, and went to bed.

I did not again see the Countess till noon on the morrow, when her carriage was at the door and she tripped down the steps to enter.

The Count stood by it, holding the door for her to enter—­I midway down the broad flight of steps.

“Good-bye,” she said, holding out her hand, from which she deftly drew the glove.  “We shall meet again.”

“God grant it!  I live for that!” said I, so low that the Count did not hear, as I bent to kiss her hand.  For in these months I had learned many things.

At this moment Henry came up to say farewell, and he shook her hand with boyish affectation of the true British indifference, which at that time it was the correct thing for Englishmen to assume at parting.

“Nice boy!” said the Countess indulgently, looking up at me.  The Count bowed and smiled, and smiled and bowed, till the carriage drove out of sight.

Then in a moment he turned to me with a fierce and frowning countenance.

“And now, Monsieur, I have the honour to ask you to explain all this!”

I stood silent, amazed, aghast.  There was in me no speech, nor reason.  Yet I had the sense to be silent, lest I should say something maladroit.

A confidential servant brought a despatch.  The Count impatiently flung it open, glanced at it, then read it carefully twice.  He seemed much struck with the contents.

“I am summoned to Milan,” he said, “and upon the instant.  I shall yet overtake my sister.  May I ask Monsieur to have the goodness to await me here that I may receive his explanations?  I shall return immediately.”

“You may depend that I shall wait,” I said.

The Count bowed, and sprang upon the horse which his servant had saddled for him.

But the Count did not immediately return, and we waited in vain.  No letter came to me.  No communication to the manager of the hostel.  The Count had simply ridden out of sight over the pass through which the Thal wind brought the fog-spume.  He had melted like the mist, and, so far as we were concerned, there was an end.  We waited here till the second snow fell, hardened, and formed its sleighing crust.

Then we went, for some society to Henry, over to the mountain village of Bergsdorf, which strings itself along the hillside above the River Inn.